"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Samuel Beckett

"After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life." Joseph Brodsky

"The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose." Jacques Monod

Today's image: If You Want to Achieve Greatness Stop Asking for Permission by Thomas Hawk. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing.

Eating your own dog food

Whose blog is this I think I know. He's spends his time on Twitter, though.

Been a while since I was last in this hall. Hope that you are enjoying your summer and that all is well with you.

Please allow me to share some thoughts about broadcasters and the road ahead.

A quick review of just about any station website will blatantly suggest broadcasters are laggards, they're not pacing with innovation. My thought is they should be (but are not) eating their own dog food. Let me put that into context. As Professor Leonard Lodish said...

"Technology-oriented people think if they build a better mousetrap, people will buy it," Lodish says. "But as the venture capitalists say, ‘The dogs don't always eat the dog food.' You've got to market effectively."

[ Reference: Getting the dogs to eat the dog food]

In my experience, station staffs are not living, breathing, and fussing over every pixel of their website(s). They're putting it out there but they're not, themselves, heavy users. Some station folk may like their site(s) but too few are real believers, honestly passionate, pumped about being in-the-tank, rabid evangelists, proud enough to say they LOVE their site(s), ready to take up the fight with anyone not in complete agreement that their site(s) is/are, by far, the very best in the market.

Clearly, station staffs are overworked and consumed with the daily press of affairs, however, the listeners/viewers don't care. They've been told to visit and when they do they typically find a site that fails to deliver. Station sites fail on many counts but none greater than failing as a total time suck. Too often listeners/viewers are failing to find things that they are excited about sharing. This is an epic fail, the failure of engagement. It's one of those engine warning lights you best be being paying close attention to going forward. The quality of your station website(s) has/have to be equal to or greater than the quality of your on-air product(s).

Do your assets matter?

Are they discoverable and easy to share?

A review of your referrals will give you a richer picture. How much of your inbound traffic is from the folks? Where are MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, Twitter, et al ranking in your referrals?

Last month, how many times did your site(s) strike the responsive chord and generate over one-hundred comments on a single post? How many times have your Twitter updates achieved the social network gold of 100+ retweets? How many times this year has your site attracted the attention of your local media colleagues and become news in the metro? When was the last time something on your site became the subject of state, national and/or international attention/news? Are your digital assets highly ranked and prized locally (e.g., A top 20 Twitter account in your DMA? Are one or more of your blogs respected and linked to by other local media and bloggers?). Are your assets "made fresh daily" dynamic and in the moment taking advantage of the new "nowness" and hyper-connectivity of the real-time network? I'm not talking about pulling a Webby nomination, I'm talking about the number of times you have crashed your server, I'm talking about the kind of stuff that leads to your sales people fighting over the inventory baked into your web assets.

If you've not achieved any of those kind of results know this - there is still time to get serious and get in the game. You can do it. It all starts with being honest and doing the hard work. First, show the listeners/viewers that you truly care. Care enough to get into the conversation and engage. Care enough to listen seriously. Care enough to eat your own dog food, the stuff that you keep telling your listeners/viewers to eat. How is it? How can it be better? What would have to happen to make it the best?

How do you go from being the station known (and loved) for Carlos and the Chicken (hat tip: Tom Webster) or that fun-loving morning show weather guy to also being the station known (trusted) for being the gold standard of ongoing local community engagement?

And, really important, please do remember this (Thank me later)

"People come back to places that send them away."
Dave Winer

Don't be concerned about whether the glass is half-empty or half-full, be very concerned with who's pouring. Game on! Your thoughts are invited and appreciated. Next, engaging the developer community and getting real about curation. Thanks for stopping by.

Bonus: TV stations websites are preaching to the choir by Terry Heaton, here.

Extra credit bonus: What Happened to Yahoo by Paul Graham, here.

P.S. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

"Hire execs who love the product." Dave Winer

"Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it." Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

Today's image: Banksy. Cans Festival Leake Street SE1 by pomphorhynchus. Amazing. Thank you for sharing.

Good to be back. So much to catch up on. Let's get started.

Dave Winer inspired this post. Should you not be aware of Dave, please do get to know him. He was instrumental in bringing us game-changing breakthroughs including blogging, RSS and podcasting. He's an original thinker, a person not afraid of dealing in that most rare and refreshing of attitudes, he dares to offer unvarnished thought. You may find his blog, Scripting News, here. Longtime readers will recall the header of this blog once contained Dave's wise counsel "People come back to places that send them away." That has never been more true or relevant than it is today.

Recently Dave wrote: "Every crop of entrepreneurs thinks it's different. They never are, but they have to learn that for themselves. One thing they do over and over is hire execs who don't love the product. It's as if the guy who ran professional football didn't like football." My sense is Dave is spot-on in this observation. Read Dave's entire post, Hire execs who love the product, here.

Seems to me too many of those working in broadcast today don't truly love the product. Should we somehow be given the ability to Mirandize the majority of broadcast leadership, have them raise a hand and give us the straight dope under oath, my sense is our finding would be there ain't a lot of love. These guys are not happy, not having fun, not excited about the industry as it is today and not close to convincingly enthusiastic regarding the road ahead. Can't totally blame them. It's not the job they signed up for. Moreover, 2009 is turning out to be yet another one of those years that they would prefer we all just agree to forget. More on this leadership issue later.

Today, let us choose to learn rather than forget.

Here now the lessons of a media company about one hundred and thirty years old that put down one of it's most prized assets earlier this year. The Rocky Mountain News printed it's final edition on February 27, 2009.

At that ending, John Temple was the editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News. Now he presents us with an exceptional gift - lessons learned from the end of an institution. Here are his ten lessons. I strongly recommend you visit his blog, watch his video and read his entire presentation delivered earlier today at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google. [Speakers list]

1. Know what business you're in.
2. Know your customers.
3. Know your competition.
4. Know your goal.
5. Have a strategy and be committed to pursuing it.
6. Measure, measure, measure.
7. Keep new ventures free from the rules of the old.
8. Let the people running a new venture do what's best for their business, regardless of the potential impact on the old.
9. To compete in a new medium, you have to understand it.
10. Invest in R&D.

Bravos, John. Well done. Thanks for sharing. This gentleman loved his product, loved his job, of that there can be no doubt. His leading by example, his generous offering of learning, is simply exemplary. You may find John's post, including video, slides and the text of his presentation, here.

Thanks, again, to Dave Winer for the inspiration and to NYU rock star Jay Rosen for his tip on John's wonderful gift of learning.

Your comments are always welcome.

More tomorrow. Thank you for stopping by.

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has got there first, and is waiting for it." Terry Pratchett

"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained." Walt Disney

"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk." Doug Larson

Today's image: Looking Downtown by James Neeley. Amazing. Thank you for sharing.

As I was saying...

The press of daily affairs has been such that there has simply been no time for blogging.

Please accept my apologies and my sincere thanks. Your emails and other contact have been encouraging. The conjecture, priceless (e.g., Maybe he's dead?). In answer to many, let me say all here is exceptionally good, never better.

On with the show.

Stuff the cool kids are talking about: In the spirit of Madtown hero Dave Winer (we locals claim he is only taking a really long extended holiday in Berkeley) let me provide some jumps. To connect the dots here, it was Dave who famously said "People come back to places that send them away."

Flogos - Promotion and NTR magic.

Michael Rosenblum - You need to be reading this guy. He's only reinventing video. One of the last big things he invented was for Al Gore, Current. Michael is brilliant and playing at the top of his game. Check out the writing and videos on his blog. Repeat, daily.

Yahoo! Jerry Yang stepping down creates one of the biggest potential game-changing moments in the online world. The big two could become the big three in the USA. The early buzz and Vegas odds say News Corp prexy Peter Chernin would be the ideal successor. As ever, Kara Swisher has the story covered, including review of the suspects, via ATD here.

Moms v Motrin: Over the weekend we witnessed an interesting real-time experiment in social media. Moms took on Big Pharma using Twitter, YouTube, blogs, other SM tools. Motrin never had a chance, the moms won. It's an object lesson. Grammer Girl offers a good overview, What People Forget About Twitter here. How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign by Michael Learmonth and Rupal Parekh via AdAge here. Related videos, check other blog posts via BuzzFeed. #motrinmoms tag on Twitter search here. Here's proof positive the Motrin meme has achieved escape velocity, the parody has begun. Check out this video mashup, Getting a boob job seems to be in fashion, via YouTube here. Finally, what's your Twitter strategy?

Philly fresh: Mel Taylor, who makes his living by helping media create local online revenues, checks in to advise the new site devoted to live music and local bands is alive in beta. Check it out here. Congrats and cheers to Mel and all involved. Are you reading Mel's blog? Jump on over here.

My bookmarks - Not sure if you are aware but in the left column is my running collection of bookmarks (my del. icio. us). These are items I'm reading, sharing with clients and friends. Two stand outs this early morning: Steve Gillmor's timely piece on Microcasting merits your attention. Timesman David Carr knocks the cover clean off the ball with his writing on dead tree guys firing top talent. A very relevant and disturbing trend in media.

Back with more tomorrow. Thanks, appreciate you stopping by.

"It doesn't matter what people think about you or your company. What matters is how you make people feel about themselves and their decisions in your presence." Tom Asacker

"No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant." Horace

Today's image: Francia - Holanda by arrozpide. Great shooting. Thanks for sharing.

Execution, not excuses
Third in a series

Thoughts on next steps for media CEOs. Ten things you must do now to prevail in 2009. Here now, the seventh of those ten. Previously: first in this series here, second in this series here.

7. The play's the thing, so said Shakespeare. It seems the majority agrees, content is king. The primary mission of every media company remains the same, find out what the market wants and then give it to them. What has changed is the accelerating shift in production and consumption patterns from a once purely producer-centric, linear world to a new consumer-centric, multidimensional mediascape. Cory Doctorow speaks to this shift when he says "Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about."

We are moving from a world of print, radio and TV to an environment of text, audio and video. The technologies of delivery are becoming increasingly transparent. Further, technology obviates place and time as we once knew it. We have indications that viewers demonstrate they care about the content without regard to the method of delivery. Product over provenance. The viewing of a recent SNL sketch starring Tina Fey as candidate Sarah Palin provides a practical illustration. A significantly larger number of viewers watched the sketch online (and continue to do so) than watched the actual NBC broadcast. Similarly, the overwhelming majority of folks who heard about or saw the Katie Couric interview with Palin did not first hear of it or see it at its real-time origin, on the CBS Evening News. These examples suggests content remains king. Content that was in demand was simply consumed in more than one place and at more than one time. The now well known comment by a college student is relevant here..."If the news is important, it will find me" (thanks to Timesman Brian Stelter). Let me suggest a paraphrase...If the content is good enough, it will find me.

Media firms must develop, produce, purchase or otherwise offer content that consistently creates demand sufficient to fuel a revenue engine that serves to produce a profit. Content must be made available as discoverable digital assets. CEOs need to shift strategic focus from import only with the addition of export. It's becoming less a game of either, or and more the new game of and. We agree with the wise counsel of Dave Winer - "People come back to places that send them away." [via] My sense is the most successful in the business of media will be those known to consistently provide proprietary intangibles which create sustained demand. This requires more than knowledge and trade craft, it demands the wellsprings of imagination and creativity. As George Gilder recently said "The real source of all growth is human ingenuity and entrepreneurship, which often thrive in the worst of times - and are always surprising...Knowledge is about the past; entrepreneurship is about the future."

All that's important is what comes out of the speakers
and what's on the screen(s).
Everything else is a footnote.

Web video phenom Gary Vaynerchuk often says "Content is king but marketing is queen, and the queen rules the household." Next, we'll consider marketing and what media CEOs must do to prevail in 2009.

V O T E

"None are more liable to mistakes than those who act only on second thoughts." Luc de Vauvenargues

"Problems always appear big when incompetent men are working on them." William Feather

"Patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet." Jean Jacques Rousseau

Today's image: Dreamy World by dhahi alsaeedi. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

The Slow Growth of HD Radio. The assiduous Tom Webster of Edison Media Research reviews the bidding and makes a suggestion...

"HD has to start with great, new digital brands first, with distribution over HD receivers AND online, and at least some of these have to be big, high profile national shows. Radio's goal should be compelling digital brands for the future, and in that context HD radio is just one means of distribution...The solution is not a programming issue but an HR strategy issue."

Bravos to Tom. He's right, it's not either/or, rather it's an issue of AND. Read Tom's entire post here. Thanks, Tom. Let's keep the conversation moving forward.

Let me suggest we run with Tom's concept of "big, high profile national shows" AND continue local innovation (e.g., The gifted programmer Mark Pennington and his award winning offering - RIFF2)

The national creative is getting better. My thought is it still lacks the power of localization. It needs the local tag, that specific and very local "door buster" to drive retail. It's what Rob Walker calls "the Desire Code...(his) name for the complex factors, rational and otherwise, that spark us to make particular purchase decisions." [via]. It's what Douglas Atkin refers to saying "The time has arrived for brands to take their place among others as new iterations of community in contemporary society." [via]. The first tribe of wireless has the ability to create communities from scratch practically overnight. Nothing subtle about this, what's needed now is full on, in your face, retail selling, take the gloves off stuff engaging the Reptilian brain. Let's agree to stop playing around and commit every industry resource to a full blown initiative of Manhattan Project or Moon shot scale. Let's agree to put every advantage available into play and create our own future. It's analog, it's digital, it's online, it's wireless in every configuration. Every platform matters.

Doc Searls: The new business of free radio. Doc understands the big picture as few do. Have to disagree with his notion of towers being less useful in the future. As it pertains to analog, agreed but HD Radio offers the potential of a unique depth and richness of practical apps. Wireless wins.

Stay tuned: I'm willing to wager that branding wizard Kelly O'Keefe and team have something special up their Radio 2020 sleeve.

Now, on the N=1 Tech desk: The uber-cool tech maven Dave Winer. Thanks to a wee bit of script this blog now features a preview of Dave Winer's TechJunk, Hot Product News for Tech Innovators. Check it out, left column. Use the link and put it in your reader. Thanks, Dave!

Summary judgment: Song of the Summer of 08 - I Kissed a Girl, Katy Perry [YouTube]. After conferring with radio programming aces Brian Kelly and Mark Edwards, advantaged, as well, by the considered opinion of pop music aficionado Austin Johnson, it seems fair to pronounce Katy the winner.

NPR API, the back story: Steve Gillmor delivers the goods with NPR's Dennis Haarsager, Zach Brand and Daniel Jacobson via The Gillmor Gang here. Kudos to Steve for a good show. Bravos to Dennis for his refreshing and exceptional leadership. Highly recommended (the show and Dennis' leadership)

Run that by me one more time: WGCI is a top ten no show in the 12 to death pre-currency Chicago PPM data. Here's the 12+ ranker. 1. WGN 2. WDRV 3. WBBM-AM 4. WTMX 5. WUSN 6. WLS-FM 7. WVAZ 8. WLS-AM 9. WLIT 10t. WLEY, WOJO. 25-54 pers, WDRV #1, WTMX #2. The headline news for me was reach. 12+ cume - WDRV #1. WLIT #2. WTMX #3.

Congrats & cheers: Early happy birthday wishes to the one year old My Damn Channel (7/31). Web 2.0 ace Rob Barnett and his gang of co-conspirators are writing their own sheet music. It sounds, and looks, mighty cool. Facebook signs search and advertising deal with Microsoft (MySpace has a somewhat similar deal with Google).

Closed circuit to Google: I'm lovin my iGoogle but what's up with the slow loading of GMail? Seems to be getting even slower, more often than not requiring a reload prompt..."This is taking longer than usual. Try reloading the page." Is it a bug that is part of the iGoogle "experiment"? Have anything to do w/Firefox 3?

It's a social thing: Best line of last week, Jason Calacanis..."FriendFeed drinks Twitter's milkshake." My thought is last summer Twitter was white hot, this summer it's FriendFeed that's clearly on. Twitter fail?

"Leadership is the initiation and direction of endeavor in the pursuit of consequence. Anything else is criticism from janitors." Royal Alcott

"If you mean to profit, learn to please." Winston Churchill

"Work is the price paid for reputation." Baltasar Gracian

Today's image: Everlasting in blue by kimtojin. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Warm up that Plan B: If you're in the ad-supported measured media dodge best to get something real ready now and on hot standby. The economy is not coming around. Ted Forstmann, one of the brightest guys in private equity, says we are in a credit crisis "...the likes of which I've never seen..." [The Credit Crisis is Going to Get Worse by Brian M. Carney, via WSJ here]. Also in the article, Ted shares some wisdom from Warren Buffett, once telling him about the three "I"s in every cycle...1. Innovator 2. Imitator 3. Idiot. My sense is the Idiots will continue to be obsessed with the numerator, blamestorming - making excuses, delegating blame to the business cycle and other external forces. No matter, their "getting better" strategy is past its best used by date. The Idiots will create opportunity for a fresh new cycle led by Innovators. The Innovators will get busy, focused on the very serious business of getting dramatically different and, in the process, change the denominator. For those playing along at home, Ted is Farid's boss. Hint: "The source of Google's competitive advantage is learning by doing" so says Google chief economist Hal R. Varian. Read more Google, Zen Master of the Market via NY Times here. Bravos to Ted for telling it like it is and congrats to Brian on the get with kudos for a piece well done.

Buzz: Wal-Mart gets a new logo (Blue w/orange sunburst) and loses the hyphen becoming Walmart. FireShot - the Firefox screenshot extension, very cool. More info here (thanks to Dave Winer for the tip).

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room: Dave Winer leads the league (again). He bows TechJunk [related blog]. If you want to stay on the absolute leading edge of tech, get this into your reader. Bravos to Dave!

Bonus: GuruFocus. Stock picks and market insights gleaned from the truly rich (e.g., the major player wealth including Warren Buffet)

Congrats & cheers: Lisa Lambden & Michael Rosenblum to be married next month. Michael blogs about it here. Public Radio Programming Directors Association bows new site. Radio programming ace Dave Wellington joins Clear Channel, new skipper at WWDC and WCHH. (thanks to Lee Arnold for the tip). The 2008 Women to Watch winners including Sandy Constan, Nancy Hill, Charlene Li, Maureen McGuire, Kavita Vazirani, Mary Beth West and Vivi Zigler. More via Ad Age here.

Grapes: More good values in red under $10. Penfolds, Koonunga Hill, Shiraz Cabernet, 2006 (Australia). Dona Paula, Los Cardos, Malbec, 2006 (Argentina).

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." Dr. Seuss

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." Douglas Adams

"Today I met with a subliminal advertising executive for just a second." Steven Wright

Today's image: Ol' Man River by edwardleger. Great shot. Thank you for sharing.

Almost done with preparation for my upcoming talk.

So, of course, the uber-cool Dave Winer again brings up his Rethinking the conference meme. He's totally right. Read Dave's post w/comments here. Bravos, Dave. Well said (again).

Congrats & cheers: Paul Smurl promoted to VP/Advertising at New York Times. BJ Leiderman the very gifted guy that composes all that killer music for public media stars in his own video classified, check it out here. Dan Farber and team CNET on their new look and feel, preview here.

Bonus: Musicovery: interactive webRadio

Bonus quote: "Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid." John Wayne

Grapes: Chateau Ste Michelle Riesling, exceptional value under $10. Highly recommended.



Thanks to Jessica Hagy for her tribute (above) to the brilliant George Carlin.

"High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace." Tennessee Williams

"There is an audience for every play; it's just that sometimes it can't wait long enough to find it." Shirley Booth

"No pleasure lasts long unless there is variety in it." Publilius Syrus

Today's image: Test pic #9 by Dave Winer. Very cool shot. Thanks for sharing.

The show must go on

Succession planning is difficult. It's one of the only mission critical tasks that consistently gets a pass until it becomes a high priority, one of obvious and serious urgency. We should get around to that someday becoming What are we going to do now?

The sudden and unexpected loss of the very gifted, hard working and successful Tim Russert serves as a perfect illustration.

As a practical matter, Tim was an incredible talent and a strong leader who held four key posts at NBC News.

Wendy Wilkinson, already on staff, would appear the person most deserving to be named NBC's D.C. bureau chief, one of Tim's responsibilities.

But who is best qualified to serve as the next managing editor and moderator of Meet The Press? Who is the person that can also contribute to the other news division shows as chief political correspondent (and advise parent GE on relevant political matters)? Finally, who is the executive that can serve as effective advocate for political news when dealing with New York.

No doubt, Tim Russert was that most rare of once in a generation broadcasters but the show must go on. Steve Capus and Jeff Zucker have a big, complicated hiring and potential major reorganization on their hands. They'll need to do a job equal to that once done by Michael Gartner in hiring Tim (likely a mission impossible).

Waiting until you need to find someone is never the best strategy. The odds are against you especially when timing is no longer on your side. Succession planning deserves to be a priority on the agenda of every manager before need presents. It's consistently the one must-do that managers just don't do. The unexpected happens and it happens to the best of managers. The failure to develop a solid succession plan twice worked against CBS in recent years. Howard Stern and Dan Rather.

Five suggestions.

1. Champion human resources development. Every person on your team deserves the opportunity to realize their full potential. Develop the people who develop your profits. Exhibit A: Meet The Press EP Betsy Fischer started as an intern on the show seventeen years ago.

2. Make it a requirement. To be eligible for promotion people must have trained and/or identified (and be in contact with) one or more qualified replacements.

3. Formalize succession planning. Make it part of the annual business planning process. Establish timed objectives with delayed incentives for effective implementation (i.e., Identify candidates by dates certain, pay bonuses when actually faced with a need that the plan resolves).

4. Adopt the practice of continuous recruitment. No matter how strong the short list developed continue to network and search for qualified candidates, especially high potential candidates.

5. Keep score. At the end of every week ask yourself "If the airplane went down and [Dave Martin] didn't come back from vacation do we have at least two good candidates ready, willing and legally available to talk with us about [Dave's] job? Whom is [Dave] now training to take his place?" Keep a scorecard listing all your players, grade yourself. How ready are you this week? No, really, this week, right now, how ready are you?

Plan now for the show to go on later. Finding people is made easy when you're looking for them before you need them. Pay no attention to those who would have you (and their bosses) believe "There's no one out there," they're out there and you're paid to find, develop, retain and someday replace them. As the great Paul Drew taught "Planning affords the best ROI."

[Related: Timesmen Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg write With Tim Russert's Death, NBC Must Replace a Man of Many Roles here and David Carr writes The Media Equation - In Mourning for a Man and his Era, here. WaPo's Eugene Robinson writes The Outsider's Insider here. The story all insiders are talking about - news of Tim's death broke not on NBC but on Wikipedia - BW's Jon Fine w/more here.]

Word to the wise: Don't write another liner, produce another promo or create another ad until you read this PDF. Thank me later.

The responsive chord: Tony Schwartz passes. [Obit, NYT]

Local, local, local: outside.in bows Radar (in preview here)

Grapes: Favorable exchange rates (1 USD = 3.04 ARS) continue to make the wines of Argentina exceptionally good values. Budini, Malbec 2006 (Mendoza). A good red under $10, drinks like a $25 wine.

"Youth is a defect that corrects itself with time." Enrique Jardiel Poncela

"Knowledge may have its purposes, but guessing is always more fun than knowing." W.H. Auden

"There is a crack in everything. It's how the light gets in." Leonard Cohen

Today's image: Time for bath by Robbi. Fun shot. Thank you.

Dave Winer: "...if Bill can be the first black president, then Barack can be the first woman president."

You are your unsold avail

How broadcasters (and MSOs) are using their unsold avails provides valuable insight.

Locally, one of the network affiliates has been filling unsold avails with news promos and one recruitment ad seeking a seller. The cable operator is filling with ppv, triple play promos and one generic recruitment ad.

Can these avails be put to better, more effective use?

No doubt.

All that is required is imagination and a sensitivity to being of service locally.

One obvious example from this week's local news - our community is close to a serious shortage of blood, donations being off due to the recent bad weather.

Broadcast and cable should rush to the rescue.

Every station, every MSO has unsold avails this quarter.

How you put unsold avails to work says everything about who you are.

Stop running those tired promos.

Start creating and running local messages that help to make a real difference in your community. Localize the unsold avails. Local, local, local.

Bonus: The seven elements of the Tom Peters' (UK), talent-centric business transformation model here.

Congrats & cheers: Danno Wolkoff honored with the 2008 Rockwell Award. Well deserved! Terry Mackin, one very sharp second-generation broadcaster, joins Univision to head their TV station group.

"I quote others only the better to express myself." Michel de Montaigne

"Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality." Arthur Koestler

"If you want to get lucky...it pays to be ready." Michael Bierut

Today's image: This Way by photosapience. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing!

Radio execs continue to have important and valuable missed opportunities at hand. More here (including comment by Mel Taylor).

Local, local, local: Google gets a dedicated GOOG-411 button on new phones. Release here.

Make it urgent

Fred Jacobs revisits last month's kerfuffle related to the new GSD&M creative from the HD Radio Alliance and suggests an industry dialogue. He's right. Fred's post here. What is obviously missing in all of this - so far - is any sense of urgency on the part of Peter Ferrara. Disclosure, transparency, creative collaboration, ongoing open and candid industry conversation are needed going forward. Needed now! This is becoming less about the new creative and more about leadership. Peter, do the right thing, take the lead, make 2008 the year of dramatic game-changing difference, of real progress for HD Radio. P.S. You'll find a great many of radio's best and brightest willing and ready to answer the call.

Face time, again: Free the Scoble 5,000!!! Kara's take here...

"All that information on Facebook is Robert Scoble’s. So, he should–even if he agreed to give away his rights to move it to use the service in the first place (he had no other choice if he wanted to join)–be allowed to move it wherever he wants."

Dave Winer lends his usual uncommon good sense to this...

"It's a big effin loop we're in. One of these times around one of the companies that feels (incorrectly) that they have a lock on their users, will voluntarily give it up and be a leader in Generation N+1. I've never seen it happen, but in theory I think it could...So Facebook has the opportunity to be a crossover company, part of the next generation -- or a last gasp of the generation that's about to run out of gas. It's their choice. And it's fitting somehow that Scoble is the poster child for users in this cycle."

More Dave w/comments here.

Robert writes Facebook disabled my account and weighs in here (hundreds of comments and counting - good show).

LATER: We learn Robert was alpha testing Plaxo Pulse.

The lesson here is not about ToU or portability of personal data or the myth called privacy. The lesson here is don't be messin with alpha-geeks. More on data portability here.

Bubble 2: Plaxo for sale? $100 mil? Timesman Andrew Ross Sorkin has the story here.

Resolution, Read More: Brad puts up a one page summary of the Thomas P.M. Barnett suggested reading list. Outstanding. Highly recommended list, here. Thanks Brad, and TPMB! Earlier comp on Tom's site here.

"The idea seems absurd, but I can find no flaw in it." Johannes Kepler

"Between the idea and the reality. Between the motion and the act. Falls the shadow." T.S. Eliot

"If I don't know I know, I think I don't know." R.D. Laing

Today's image: Blowing in the wind by Zamm. Great shot! Thank you for sharing.

Last of my eight to watch in '08: Richard MacManus & Dan Mason.

Richard is editor of ReadWriteWeb and one of the brightest of today's thought leaders. When Richard says something is important you can bank it. From Richard's list of 2008 predictions..."The online advertising market will consolidate, after the spate of acquisitions in 2007. CPM will continue to dominate for media brands and CPC for niche sites, although there will be experimentation in VRM and other forms of highly specific targeting of ads. Privacy issues will prevent the latter from becoming mainstream though. The much-hyped CPA (Cost per Action) will continue to be a pipe dream, because publishers simply don't want it."

Dan is CEO of CBS Radio. 2008 will be his first full year leading the charge and it's fair to expect nothing less than amazing things. Dan Mason is the goods and this second tour at CBS is just what the company needed. (FD: I have served as a consultant to CBS and to Viacom. Have also worked for Dan. I would include him with the great bosses it has been my honor to serve including the legendary N.L. Bentson, the incredible A.B. Hartman and the great SGM George A. Warren)

Six of the eight previously mentioned - Rob Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Joseph Jaffe, Michael Rosenblum, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer. It is my suggestion we all can learn something from each of these guys. Please suggest your ones to watch via comments.

Movie of the year: Juno. Diablo Cody rocks! She just missed being on my eight to watch. A writer you will be hearing about (and reading), gifted.

Blogger of the year: Steve Dahl. The Chicago media rockstar is playing at the top of his game.

Blog to watch in '08: jacoBLOG. Fred Jacobs and crew are posting thoughtful stuff well worth your bandwidth (and it keeps getting better - add it to your reader today).

Asked & Answered: Which video ad format will become dominant? Liz Gannes polls the experts here.

Bhutto's assasination: Thomas P.M. Barnett weighs in here.

Congrats & cheers: Radio programming ace Harve Alan has joined the conversation. Check out his new blog here. Dave Winer debuts his latest product - FlickrFan.

"Resistance to new ideas increases as to the square of their importance." Bertrand Russell

"Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced." Alfred N. Whitehead

"Yesterday an idea is mine, today it is yours, and tomorrow it belongs to the whole world." Konstantin Stanislavsky

Today's image: supercitrus super collider by Splat Worldwide. Awesome. Thanks for sharing!

Politics as metaphor

When working with broadcast promotion folks we often use the line "Running for US Senate." We use retail politics as a metaphor. The most successful stations (and talent) understand the concept, understand the need to get out where the viewers/listeners are. Hint: they're not in the station. We counsel that email, chat, im, text, blogs and all the other tools are important but showing up is most important of all.

Over the holiday a colleague was nice enough to send along a heads up that Paige Nienaber had written something about politics and station promotion. It's posted at AllAccess under Consultant Tips, here's a taste...

"I've begun to see more and more stations that, for lack of a better term, have pulled the goalie. Have pulled off the streets. And are marketing themselves impersonally and one dimensionally through e-mail and outdoor.

Side note: My niece lives "out west." Her favorite (if a 16 year-old can have a favorite anymore) station was doing a pretty cool promotion. I asked about it when we were on the phone. She replied "I didn't play. They made you sign up for stuff and I really want more spam." (Exaggerated 16-year-old sarcasm is implied.)

Radio has always done a terrific job of embracing new technologies. It's part of being contemporary. And we should. But each new "thing" is just another part of the arsenal. It's not THE arsenal.

Case-in-point: Someone who goes back a long ways with me -- Jo Jo Wright from KIIS in L.A. Phenomenally talented. Phenomenally nice. And phenomenally smart. Every new gimmick that comes along becomes just another facet in his juggernaut to win the world. Ain't no one going to beat the guy. When pagers came out, like every jock between Medford and Maine, he got one. But he USED it. Came in an hour early each day and returned pages. That creates the kind of loyalty that money (contesting) can't buy.

I was at the hotel pool on my last visit to Cox in Honolulu and chatting with the bartender, who was wearing a KIIS shirt. She brought up, totally unbidden, that the best DJ in the world works there, blah blah blah, she'd texted him for something, they traded texts, etc. et al, ad nauseum. Yep. Jo Jo. She sent him a text to enter her sister for something, he texted back, treated her like an actual live human being, bing-bang-boom. End of story. "Greatest DJ in the world" was her term."

Check out Paige via AllAccess (free reg req) or at his site here. Highly recommended! Thanks and bravos to Paige, very well done! P.S. No matter what business you happen to be in you'll achieve more when you and your team "Run for US Senate." It's another case of putting the focus not on getting better but on getting different. Employ one of the secrets used by every successful campaign - create contrast! P.S.S. The next time your team needs a killer idea or a fresh new approach in staging a promotion/event get in touch with Paige.

The play's the thing

Michael Rosenblum is at it again. Writing wonderful stuff you need to be reading. This time on the art of storytelling...

Stop and think about this for a moment.

All across the country, every who is watching the first shot is thinking exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

Everyone.

This is a pretty impressive trick.

And now you have a moment to capture the audience as yours.

All you have to do is talk to them.

‘To’ them… as opposed to ‘at’ them.

Everyone who is watching this is thinking the same question at the same time - ‘what happened to the dog’.

All you have to do is answer the question.

Read Michael's post, Scripting without paper - 3rd in a series here. Excellent, Michael! Kudos!

They're living closer to the future than we are dept: 64% of online teens (12-17) engaged in at least one type of content creation. 35% of all teen girls blog, 20% of online boys. 54% of wired girls post photos compared to 40% of online boys. Boys do dominate one area - posting videos. As we suggest to clients on the day job - Flickr is to women as ESPN is to men. Read the topline here - Pew Internet: Teens and Social Media

Apropos of nothing: Congrats & cheers to Dan Kois, Lane Brown and the gang at Vulture - behold, Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2007: A Pie Chart. Genius! Have a look here. Includes link to actual Pf list. Thanks to Rex for the tip.

Ka-ching, Seattle style: Amazon.com's biggest shopping day was December 10th, 5.4 million items sold, 62.5 items ordered per second.


Lesson already in progress: Scobleizer teaches Google an important lesson in GPC (Granular Privacy Controls). Good going Robert! Read his post with comments here. Smart money says team GR will have this fixed before COB. My sense is this stuff is cohort sensitive; the youth define privacy in a new way, or care about it in a truly different way. The truth would seem to remain the same, privacy is a myth.

Bonus: Nada Stirratt & Jason Witt, two stars of the MTVN Ad Group, do the paidContent interview. Kudos to David Kaplan on a job well done!

"I would expect to see new ad products within casual gaming and interactive video overlays. The third piece is mobile and the fourth is social media open platforms. Last month, we launched a widget program with a fast food marketer that worked across multiple sites and had a 360 degree grab-and-hold experience. One of the things that you can’t do with sales—but that Digital Fusion can do—is tap into viral traffic."

Read the interview here.

More of my eight to watch in '08: A brilliant gentleman with the courage to consistently do and say the right thing. Candor as refreshing (and needed) as that first hot cup of coffee in the morning. He's the guy who gave us blogging, podcasting, RSS and you can wager big, without worry, much more to come. Those of us living in Madison claim him a local hero, a UW grad done good. His river of news concept is but one of his fresh takes on what's next, get this guy into your reader today Dave Winer

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." Emerson

"You have never really lived until you've done something for someone who can never repay you." Johnny Martin

Today's image: You've Heard Most of It Before by Thomas Hawk. Beautiful. Thank you!

700Mhz: Google filing their FCC Form 175 and officially enter the spectrum auction. More from Google's Chris Sacca here.

She said, they bought: comScore & The Kelsey Group study - Consumer-generated reviews have a significant impact on offline purchase behavior. Release here.

Why Early Stage Venture Investments Fail - Fred Wilson offers up his take...

"Most venture backed investments fail because the venture capital is used to scale the business before the correct business plan is discovered. That scale/burn rate becomes the cancer that kills the business."

Excellent points. Read Fred's entire post here.

She's a caster, he's a caster, you can be a caster too! But what kind? Dave Winer reviews the state of casting in late 2007. Kudos to Dave! Check out his post here.

Error messages: The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes - Alina Tugend writes...

"As we get older, many of us invest a great deal in being right. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, we focus on flagellating ourselves, blaming someone else or covering it up. Or we rationalize it by saying others make even more mistakes.

What we do not want to do, most of the time, is learn from the experience."

Read the entire article via NYT here.

"Wisdom begins in wonder." Socrates

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." Goethe

"Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent." Rivarol

Today's image: Kona by Ron Fell. Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

The revolution will be televised (you just have to know where to look): Rob Barnett, refugee and chief of My Damn Channel is feeding, again, into that good night...

Old Media needs writers. But writers don’t need old media.

Old Media is about to be written out of its own show. They’re writing themselves off the island without even knowing it.

Old Media thinks this strike is about keeping a few more pennies of every dollar, when it’s actually about life and death.

Life happens when you embrace change. Death happens when you know you’re sick and you refuse to heal your wounds.

Old Media is crawling all over the railroad tracks - looking for lose change - and they don’t see the train coming.

We’ve all seen this movie before. It’s called, The Sixth Sense. And we know how it’s going to end. All of a sudden, Old Media realizes their old rules are actually dead.

Reminds me of that great line by Gary Hamel..."The future is not proprietary." Check out Rob's very cool new blog here.

But wait, there's more. The revolution is live. We need only read Michael Rosenblum...

"What we have done is to create, for all practical purposes, a population that is illiterate in the lingua franca of its own time - video.

We have placed the ‘ability’ to create in this now very fundamental medium, in the hands of a select and elite few.

This is a mistake."

Read Michael's post here.

So what's new(s)? Dave Winer says...

"This way of doing news is a remnant, it's anachronistic, a relic of the way news used to work, when guys like Bezos and Jobs would go on a press tour, seed Pogue, Markoff, Levy and Mossberg, they would write their pieces and the rest of us would settle for the very limited and highly spun information they provided. It's not that way anymore."

"The press still reflects what the press cares about, competing with other press. But the blogs, who aren't trying to climb the top 100 lists, are doing something else. We're just trying to share information with each other so we can learn, so we can use stuff better, make better choices, improve the products, and eventually create new products."

Conversation writ large. Thanks, Dave. The entire post here.


Fred Winston, celebrated radio star and part-time gentleman farmer, pings me to share a wine and a cheese suggestion. Best to listen up, this guy knows his wine and cheese (to say nothing of his exceptional chili, food and overall kitchen chops). Please join me and check these out. Wine: Ponzi Williamette Valley Pinot Noir 2002. Cheese: d'Affinois (a Brie-like cow's milk cheese). Thanks, Fred.

The last bastion of analog - books

Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose

kindle

992 pages downloaded in less than a minute

Content more important than distribution channel

Consumers ever more empowered

Great services shine through - Meritocracy

Balance of power shifts away from companies

Amazon customer experience drivers 1) Lowest price 2) Vast selection - choice 3) Get products to customers fast

Bonus: Great talent is out there, more often than you might think that talent may be found in the most unlikely of places. Prepare to be moved. Take a deep breath. Invest a wee bit over 4 minutes and witness a star being born. Amazing! Via YouTube here. My thanks to Tom Asacker for the tip (Agree with Tom, if you can watch the vid and not be moved, please do get yourself some medical attention).

So much to be thankful for this year. Thank you for stopping by. Happy Thanksgiving.

Today's image: Ad in NYT. My thanks to Michael Rosenblum.

Smart move by NBC News. Working with the NY Film Academy they develop skilled entry level players.

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for." John Lubbock

"The power of imagination makes us infinite." John Muir

"Either I will find a way, or I will make one." Sir P. Sidney

Mommy, make the boring conference stop: Dave Winer offers up a brilliant idea on involving the world in the upcoming LeWeb3 and Why most conferences suck here....

"...include people and places that are on the network defined by the conference. If it's like last year, there will be people tuned in from all around the world, and wouldn't it be great if we had a way to not only pull in their ideas (and we could do this better, btw) but also their imagery? It would give it a much richer world-wide feel.

One of the exciting opportunities for tech industry conferences is to find new ways to use networking on a world-wide level."

Bravos, Dave!

What Dave Winer says about conferences is important. The business conference is in serious need of reinvention. The architecture, the approach or format, used by most conferences has not changed in thirty years excepting improvements in AV. The panel of usual suspects (talking heads with concomitant ppts) is too often tired and played out. Some conferences are requiring attendees to pay good money to listen to what are nothing more than infomercial sessions. Two most often missing ingredients: interactivity (by design those attending must be involved), presenters held accountable for takeaway (evaluation - as judged by attendees).

The genius of Winer's notion is to involve all that wish to play - using the internet to transcend time and space. Now that's a BIG wow! And it's potentially game-changing.

Thanks to Dave we have verse from Paolo here. Kudos, thanks for joining the conversation!

A good part of my time is involved in adult learning. My colleagues and I believe evaluation is important. It's a significant tool for measuring and improving training impact. On the day job we use Level 4 Eval tools to keep us focused on improving our workshops. Most conferences fail to collect evaluations, those that do are not making the best of the process. For example, too many use the so-called "smile sheet" (i.e., did you like the session? how would you rate it on a scale of one to five?). This single method is not a meaningful evaluation. Smile sheets are one dimensional views that seek to capture how happy or satisfied people were with the session or the presenter(s). Yes, better than nothing. No, not a serious measure.

One thing has changed for me personally. At those conferences where I am invited to give a talk fewer and fewer give me reasons for staying around (beyond the social hang). While I love getting invited to play, I also want to learn. It seems, more often than not lately, that I'm in the night before and out the afternoon of my talk. Fewer agendas are inspired. Not just me here. Others who speak and/or attend have shared the same feelings. My thought is this is not a good sign.

Bonus: Gladwell is back! Kudos, a welcome return.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited." Albert Einstein

"The method of the enterprising is to plan with audacity and execute with vigor." Christian Bovee

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." Auguste Rodin

"I think most music will soon be free"

Chris Anderson has posted an interesting item on the music biz from which I have liberated the quotation above. Chris goes on to say...

"And for those who say that this avenue is only available to artists at the head of the curve, such as Madonna and Radiohead, I'd point out that the other group poorly served by the labels are those at the bottom of the curve, the many thousands of bands who fall below the radar of the hit-driven majors. I'd argue that they, too, have nothing to lose by letting their music go free, nothing to lose but the prospect of becoming indentured to companies stuck in last century's model of monetizing music" Read Chris' post Everything in the music industry is up (except those plastic discs) here. Kudos Chris, well said.

Steve Rubel offers up a solid writing on where we are today. The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on it's own Kool-Aid. Worth the jump here. It is feeling a bit (too much) like 1999. It's great to have the Prince of PR back in the hunt. Serve up the candor Steve. Meanwhile, speaking of refreshing unvarnished candor, Dave Winer shares the gift of perspective and reminds us #1. Remember to have fun and more. Thanks to Steve and to Dave!

Today's image: Sunrise with Ducks II by Peter Bowers. Beautiful shot. Thank you.

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it." Lou Holtz

"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be." Kurt Vonnegut

"There is always room at the top." Daniel Webster

Today's image: Fall Sunset Splendor by Bill Shannon. A killer pic caught at sunset in Columbus. Thank you very much.

Two chances to win: Four of the six CBS radio stations in Chicago are posting revenues which place them among this year's top ten billers. WBBM-AM ($33 mil), US99 ($20 mil), WXRT ($16 mil), B96 ($16 mil). Two properties represent significant upside potential: WJMK ($8 mil) and WCKG ($5 mil). The combined billings of WJMK and WCKG fail to reach the billing of either WXRT or B96. At this point it is fair to suggest getting better is not the solution but rather getting different. Time to position the assets (and the portfolio) for 2008. Tis the season. Related: The wayback machine - 1991 billings. WJMK $10.2 mil, WCKG $11.4 mil. The #1 biller in 1991 was WGN - $43 mil, #2 was WLUP - $19 mil. WJMK was the #8 biller, WCKG ranked #7.

Rules for Management Innovators

• To solve a systemic problem, you need to understand its systemic roots.
• At least initially, it's easier, and safer, to supplement an existing management process than supplant it. (Run the new in parallel with the old.)
• Commit to revolutionary goals, but take evolutionary steps.
• Be clear about the performance metrics your innovation is designed to improve.
• Start by experimenting in your "own back yard," where the political risks are the lowest.
• Whenever possible, rely on volunteers.
• Diffuse potential objections by keeping your experiments fun and informal.
• Iterate: Experiment, learn, experiment, learn.
• Don't give up: Innovators are persistent!

My thanks to Gary Hamel for this morning's brief, taken from his latest work - The Future of Management. Highly recommended. Amazon info here.

Bonus: Dave Winer via Twitter "if you're scared to hear what people really think you're not prepared for the world you live in." Made my day, Dave! Bravo and thanks.

Congrats & cheers: Respected Pac NW broadcaster Dave McDonald down the I-5 and back to Portland where he will, again, manage the CBS radio portfolio.